Dorothy Walsh Aylward taught and served as a guidance counselor at schools in Naperville Community Unit School District 203 for 28 years.

“Dorothy really enjoyed kids, and that brought a vitality to her,” said Mary Fran Ferdinandt, a retired Naperville Central High School teacher and department chair of its communication arts department.

Aylward, 84, died of natural causes on Nov. 2 at her home, said her husband of 60 years, Jack. A longtime Wheaton resident, Aylward had previously suffered two strokes and two heart attacks, her husband said.

Born Dorothy Walsh in Portland, Maine, Aylward and her family lived in Iowa and then Chicago, where she graduated from Lindblom High School on the South Side. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Ripon College in 1957.

While working as a waitress at the Aylward’s Round-Up Restaurant at 77th Street and Kedzie Avenue on the Southwest Side, Aylward met her future husband, whose family owned the restaurant.

Early in her career, Aylward moved around the country a bit with her husband, and she taught and directed plays in Westbury, N.Y., Barrington and Winter Park, Fla. In 1966, she and her husband settled in Wheaton, and that year she began teaching at Washington Junior High School in Naperville.

In 1968, Aylward began teaching English at Naperville Central. Among her students in the 1970s was future national news anchor Paula Zahn.

Ferdinandt called Aylward “well-prepared to teach literature and writing.”

“She expected a lot and most of her students produced it,” Ferdinandt said. “Her expectations were fair and reasonable, and I think students could sense that she was genuinely interested in them.”

Aylward later went back to school to earn a master’s degree in counseling from Northern Illinois University to shift gears to become a guidance counselor at Naperville Central. In the 1980s, she began serving as a guidance counselor at the school.

“She liked helping people, and she loved to help kids,” her husband said.

Aylward later was asked by the school’s administration to return to the classroom for a year to chair Naperville Central’s communication arts department.

“She was a consummate professional,” Ferdinandt said. “Those words are trite, but she was a wonderful, wonderful person. She was exceptionally kind and a wonderful person to be around.”

Aylward also directed many school plays at Naperville Central, including a production of “Auntie Mame” in 1983, which featured both faculty and students. “She did a fabulous job with ‘Auntie Mame,’ ” Ferdinandt recalled.

Aylward was a lector, minister of communion and president of the school board at her church, St. John the Baptist in Winfield. After retiring from Naperville Central in 1994, Aylward was involved in the Philanthropic Educational Organization.

Aylward and her husband were active with Chicago theaters, including the Goodman, the Steppenwolf and the Lookingglass, as well as with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As a result, the couple bought a Gold Coast condo and often spent weekends there, her husband said.